"Hysterical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... accomplice. Ah! well. Judge me, Mr. Biddulph, as you will. I have no defence. Only recollect that I warned you to go into hiding—to efface yourself—and you would not heed. You believed that I only spoke wildly—perhaps that I was merely an hysterical girl, making all ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... life, there are a very large number of minor intellectual matters in which we might learn a lesson from the Queen. There is one especially which is increasingly needed in an age when moral claims become complicated and hysterical. That Queen Victoria was a model of political unselfishness is well known; it is less often remarked that few modern people have an unselfishness so completely free from morbidity, so fully capable of deciding a moral question without exaggerating its importance. No eminent ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... spiritualism, like Francis Fey, are, or pretend to be, subject to fits, anaesthesia, jerks, convulsive movements, and trance. As Mr. Tylor says about his savage jossakeeds, powwows, Birraarks, peaimen, everywhere 'these people suffer from hysterical, convulsive, and epileptic affections'. Thus the physical condition, all the world over, of persons who exhibit most freely the accepted phenomena, is identical. All the world over, too, the same persons are credited with the rejected phenomena, clairvoyance, 'discerning of spirits,' ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... know women, or you wouldn't ask ... especially women of my wife's type ... hysterical, parasitic, passionate, desperate.... I tell you what, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... afternoon I heard for the first time the hysterical cry of a man whose nerve had given way. He picked up an arm and threw it far out in front of the trenches, shouting as he did so in a way that made one's blood run cold. Then he sat down and started crying ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... woman's hysterical laugh—and a deep-mouthed bellow rent the expectant air: shouts, screams, hat-tossings, back-clappings blending in a din that made the many-winding waters of the Silver Lea quiver and ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... very depths of the heart, brought with them their softening influence. The tears sprung forth, those tears which I thought I should never shed again, and I burst into a passionate fit of crying, the passionate crying of a child. It shook me from head to foot with its hysterical convulsions, but it left me at last calmer, soothed into stillness, with only now and then those choking after-sobs which I, child like, sent forth there on the bosom of the only mother I had ever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... backward on her sexual irritation, which soon overaccentuates everything which stands in relation to sex. Soon she lives in an atmosphere of high sexual tension in which the sound and healthy interests of a young life have to suffer by the hysterical emphasis on sexuality. The Freudian psychoanalysis, which threatens to become the fad of the American neurologists, probably goes too far when it seeks the cause for all neurasthenic and hysteric disturbances in repressed sexual ideas of youth. But no psychotherapist can doubt that the ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... hysterical child was incapable of hearing what she said, incapable of doing anything but scream louder and louder when she tried to pull down those desperately tight little hands held with frantic tenseness over the hurt eye. Marise could feel all his little ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... scene for a few minutes while the frightened hysterical woman was hurried out, while with the storm seeming to increase in violence, and amid the trampling of armed men outside, who were hurrying from the barracks, the two English visitors gradually picked up scraps of information which explained the ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... send these lines, with the hope and trust that they will find you well, even as I am myself at this moment, and in much better spirits, for my own are not such as I could wish they were, being sometimes rather hysterical and vapourish, and at other times, and most often, very low. I am at a sea-port, and am just going on shipboard; and when you get these I shall be on the salt waters, on my way to a distant country, and leaving my own behind me, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... dearly, but secretly, and which would always be a sweet and tender memory with me. I feel nervous, too, quite as if I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. I remember that Alice Asbury said she was hysterical just before she was married. I wonder if a woman's feelings on the eve of being an Old Maid are unlike those of one about ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... her brain. If Jane became the wife of this cherished son, James Bansemer's power was gone! His lips would be sealed forever. She laughed aloud in the frenzy of hope. She laughed to think what a fool she would have been to forbid the marriage. The marriage? Her salvation! Jane found her almost hysterical, trembling like a leaf. She was obliged to confess that she had heard part of their conversation below, in order to account for her manner. When Jane confided to her that she had promised to marry Graydon in September—or June—she urged ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... shares of stock for him. He is a kind of private news agency. The dull office gets ready to laugh when he comes in; and his tips, whispered merely out of friendship, of course, to the customers, add many a credit entry to Commission Account. It may be said, without any hysterical exaggeration, that he represents the worst of Wall Street; and that the worst of Wall Street is very bad. But among his virtues are a merry mind and an abiding faith that a "board member" is the most ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... ditch, and we both fired together. The hare shrieked, and turned a big somersault and fell on its back and kicked convulsively—its legs still galloping—and its face and neck were covered with blood; and, to my astonishment, Barty became quite hysterical with grief at what we had done. It's the only time I ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... strong, had not an immediate disbelief of the assertion attended it. She turned towards Lucy in silent amazement, unable to divine the reason or object of such a declaration; and though her complexion varied, she stood firm in incredulity, and felt in no danger of an hysterical ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... without apparent cause; emotions easily excited; mind often melancholy and depressed; tenderness along the spine; disturbances, of digestion, with hysterical convulsions, and other ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... the likeliest in the world to be alarmed; and the noise of swords is made to draw only two poor women thither, who were most certain to run away from it. Upon Lucia and Marcia's coming in, Lucia appears in all the symptoms of an hysterical gentlewoman:— ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... almost hysterical crying, and Cecile and Toby had both as much as they could do for the next ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... ... some cancerous reaction ... when the chamber broke open and the cells were exposed to our atmosphere again it started some action ... started to grow ... doesn't stop growing ... it's horrible ..." Bill's words were disjointed and hysterical. ...
— The Day of the Dog • Anderson Horne
... restraint of guarding his feelings for Mary's sake; and, tired with the long day, and torn by the evening's narration, all his self-command gave way, and he fell into a perfect anguish of deep-drawn, almost hysterical sobbing. ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hysterical scream she fell limply to the floor. The sight of her father's murderer had proved too much for her. Forgetting his prisoner for the moment Jimmie sprang to the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... spent a hot, discouraged morning in the kitchen—sole mistress where before she had been an all too seldom helper. At noon Mr. Dudley and Tom came home to partake of underdone potatoes and overdone meat. The twins, repressed and admonished into a state of hysterical nervousness, repaired directly after dinner to the attic. Half an hour later a prolonged wail told that Rob had cut his finger severely with an old knife; and it was during the attendant excitement that Rose managed ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... is of the first importance," I objected, "but don't you, perhaps, exaggerate the power of feeling and emotion which in religion are au fond always hysterical?" ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... was so embarrassing, and at the same time so ridiculous, that I could with difficulty resist a hysterical inclination to laugh. Here I was, at all events, a close prisoner till Captain Lovell should go to bed, and he seemed to have no idea of that rational proceeding, though it was now past three o'clock. He walked about the room, whistling softly. Once he came so near my hiding-place that I felt ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... was, indeed, the fore-court of the House of Hades. As I grew more absolutely convinced of this truth, and began dimly to discern a strange world visible in a sallow light, like that of the London streets when a black fog hangs just over the houses, my hysterical chuckling gradually died away. Amusement at the poor follies of mortals was succeeded by an awful and anxious curiosity as to the state of immortality and the life after death. Already it was certain that "the Manes are somewhat," and that annihilation is the dream ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... knew how he was to treat her. Mollie's graphic account of the scene last night had greatly alarmed him. Mrs. Blake was of a strangely excitable nature; he had been told that from her youth she had been prone to fits of hysterical emotion. She was perfectly unused to self-control, and only her son had ever exercised any influence over her. Was there not a danger, then, that, the barriers once broken down, she might pass beyond her own ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to God. It is good for many souls that she lived upon earth a little. There was nothing sentimental, visionary, or hysterical in her character. Nor, in giving her great heart with her pure soul to her Saviour, did she ever quite learn to despise the sweetness of earthly love. Not all a Saint. Yet the children of those women who most were swayed by her influence in youth are taught to hold her Saint as well ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... endearing epithet and tender expression, and recalled the time when she used to declare that she could dwell with him in a desert; her only replies were bitter reproaches and upbraidings for his treachery and deceit, mingled with floods of tears, and interrupted by hysterical sobs. Provoked at her folly, yet softened by her extreme distress, Douglas was in the utmost state of perplexity—now ready to give way to a paroxysm of rage; then yielding to the natural goodness of ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... idee wuz so weak and inconsistent that it made the man statute hysterical, and he bust out into a peal of derisive laughter, and I took my dollar and walked off, though I knowed enough could be said on this subject to make a stun statute hystericky. I lay out to send the dollar to ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... badly crushed hat, and when he turned away Helen laughed, a half-hysterical laugh. His fierce energy had, so to speak, left her breathless; she was shaken by confused emotions. It was for her sake he had plunged into the quarrel, but she felt disturbed by his savageness. For all that, something in her approved, and it was really this that troubled her. Picking up the basket, ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... full of spring violets and daffodils had just been carried by; then, as her wandering gaze came back to the solitary woman in black, who still knelt motionless near her, a sort of choking sensation came into her throat and a stinging moisture struggled in her eyes. She strove to turn this hysterical sensation to ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... want to be toned down!" The girl was almost hysterical. "I'm no Puritan—I want to live! I tell you we are different now! We're not all like Edith—and we're not like our mothers! We want to live! And we have a right to! Why don't you go? Can't you see I'm nearly crazy? It's my last night, my very ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... thoughts raced through his mind, he had been standing erect and silent, his eyes staring at the paper that crackled in his clenched fist. Dorothy's voice sounded far away repeating something. It was not till a strange hysterical note crept into her voice that he realized ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... influence upon human actions; the English being no wiser, no better, and much poorer, and more divided amongst themselves, as well as far less moral, than they were before the prevalence of this verbal decorum. This hysterical horror of poor Pope's not very well ascertained, and never fully proved amours (for even Cibber owns that he prevented the somewhat perilous adventure in which Pope was embarking) sounds very virtuous ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the hall, mounted the flight to the roof, he groaning and urging, she sobbing, hysterical, and frenzied. She climbed the ladder with him, threw back the trap, and helped him ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Charlie Webster, "we'll promise to leave our pistols at home. The only danger you'll be in, Court, will come from a lot of hysterical women trying to kiss you, but I think I can fix it to have the best lookin' ones up ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... Ossipon, striding brusque and shadowy across the shop, squatted in a corner obediently; but this obedience was without grace. He fumbled nervously—and suddenly in the sound of a muttered curse the light behind the glazed door flicked out to a gasping, hysterical sigh of a woman. Night, the inevitable reward of men's faithful labours on this earth, night had fallen on Mr Verloc, the tried revolutionist—"one of the old lot"—the humble guardian of society; the invaluable Secret Agent [delta] of Baron Stott-Wartenheim's ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... gold. and silversmiths are highly regarded, but that the ironworkers are looked upon with contempt, as an inferior grade of beings. Their kinsmen even ascribe to them the power of transforming themselves into hynas, or other savage beasts. All convulsions and hysterical disorders are attributed to the effect of their evil eye. The Amhara call them Buda, the Tigr, Tebbib. There are also Mahomedan and Jewish Budas. It is difficult to explain the origin of this strange superstition. These Budas are distinguished from other people by wearing ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... footsteps, and Hawthorne hurriedly whispered, "Duck! or we shall be interrupted by somebody." The solemnity of his manner, and the thought of the down-flat position in which we had both placed ourselves to avoid being seen, threw me into a foolish, semi-hysterical fit of laughter, and when he nudged me, and again whispered more lugubriously than ever, "Heaven help me, Mr. —— is close upon us!" I felt convinced that if the thing went further, suffocation, in my case at least, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... is the plot! And what about the characters? Rebecca is merely a hysterical old maid, who would have been set right, in the time of the Tudors, with a sound ducking; and nowadays, had she consulted a fashionable physician, she would have been probably ordered a sea-voyage, and a diet free from stimulants. The Pastor is a feeble, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... at the loss of those dreams with which Leonard had for a while charmed her wearied waking life,—all came upon her. She listened; pale and speechless; and the poor squire thought he was quietly advancing towards a favourable result, when she suddenly burst into a passion of hysterical tears; and just at that moment Frank himself entered the room. At the sight of his father, of Beatrice's grief, his sense of filial duty gave way. He was maddened by irritation, by the insult offered to the woman he loved, which a few trembling words from her explained to him,—maddened ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... diligence trundles out of Caen and takes the open country and the Paris road, not even the thought of the errand upon which she goes, of her death-dealing and death-receiving mission, can shake that normal calm. Here is no wild exaltation, no hysterical obedience to hotly-conceived impulse. Here is purpose, as cold as it is lofty, to liberate France and pay with her life for ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... a request from Mr. Ramsdell for us all to go into the drawing-room. This led to various cries from hysterical lips, such as, "We are going to be searched!" "He believes the thief and murderer to be still in the house!" "Do you see the diamond on me?" "Why don't they confine their suspicions to the favored few who ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... audacious impudence of the villain. Poor Captain Tracy's heart sank, and though not less indignant than his friend, he endeavoured to conceal his feelings. Happily O'Harrall was again summoned on deck. No sooner was he gone than Norah gave way to hysterical sobs. ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... the bonds of sanity had not snapped, but for the time I was hysterical, and I only knew that all were well and safe excepting Marvin, who was drowned. A big mug of coffee was given to me, I drank a spoonful; a glass of spirits was handed me, I drank it all, and I was guided to my cabin, ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... resigned to conduct the first one on the Furnace Bomb and the Discovery to the Bay. Perhaps wrong signals in the harbours did lead the searchers' ships to bad anchorage. At any rate Arthur Dobbs announced in hysterical fury that the Company had bribed Middleton with L5000 not to find the Passage. Middleton had come back in 1742 saying bluntly, in sailor fashion, that 'there was no passage and never would be.' At once the Dobbs faction went into a frenzy. ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... went off in the ship, rising to hysterical intensity. Bart thought, incredulously, this is really happening. It felt like a nightmare. His father a fugitive from the Lhari. Briscoe dead. He himself traveling, with forged papers, to a ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... impossible vision break and disappear from before her. Nettie's heart groaned within her, and beat against the delicate bosom which, in its tender weakness, was mighty as a giant's. She made no answer to her sister's outcry, nor attempted to comfort the hysterical sobbing into which Susan fell. Nettie gave up the hopeless business without being deceived by those selfish demonstrations. She was not even fortunate enough to be able to persuade herself into admiring love and enthusiasm for those to whom ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... but his wig, had suffered. He spent the evening with me, totally unconscious of the fact that his hair presented the singular spectacle of having been parted diagonally from the right temple to the left ear. When ladies called, my wife preferred to receive them. They were generally hysterical, and often in tears. I remember, one Sunday, to have been startled by what appeared to be the balloon from Hayes Valley drifting rapidly past my conservatory, closely followed by the Newfoundland dog. I rushed to the front door, but was anticipated by my wife. A strange lady ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... crime was to share deeply in the guilt. She also was not skilled in that casuistry which would enable her to promise anything with mental reservations. The shock of their savage and threatening reception had been severe, but she was not at all inclined to be hysterical; and though her heart seemed to stand still with a chill of dread which deepened every moment as she realized what would be exacted of her, she seemed more self-possessed than Gregory. Indeed, in the sudden and awful emergencies of life, ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... with an almost extraneous interest. She was certainly extremely interesting from that point of view, that very novel point of view. 'It's quite useless,' he said, 'to get in the least nervous or hysterical. I don't care for the darkness just now. That was all. Tell the girl I am a strange doctor—Dr Simon's new partner. You are clever at conventionalities, Sheila. Invent! I said our patient must be kept quiet—I really think he must. That is all, so far as Ada is concerned.... ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... no," said Anne, almost ready for a hysterical laugh, yet letting the old man seat himself, and then dropping on her knees before him, for she could hardly stand, "it is worse than that, sir; I know who it was who ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a little ashamed now of their fright, every one subsided; but Ethel could not sleep, and clung to Jenny in an hysterical state till a soft voice began to sing "Abide with me" so sweetly that more than one agitated listener blessed the singer and fell asleep before ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... will give me letters and telegraph ahead to the train people," said Honor. "And you mustn't believe all the hysterical tales in the newspapers, Muzzie ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... pick strange ladies up bodily and bear them out of a pandemonium of waltzing cab-horses. I'd never noticed before that cab-horses are so frivolous and hysterical." ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... accompanied by friendly words and gestures of submission. And when in spite of all things the natural evil did not cease, when the people continued to die of pestilence, then came the opportunity for hysterical or ambitious persons to discover new ways of penetrating the mind of the god. There would be dreamers of dreams and seers of visions and hearers of voices; readers of the entrails of beasts and interpreters of the flight of birds; there ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... now to laugh. The very thought of it was farcical in its very odiousness. Merri, who had embarked on his proposal with grandiloquent phraseology, suddenly paused, almost awed by that strange, hysterical laughter. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... only be happy with you, my father!" she cried; but it was of no avail. He, being a father and not a mother, was unable to perceive what was in the girl's heart. He considered it quite natural that she should be a trifle hysterical in anticipating her new life—that strange untraveled country! Ah, is there anything more pathetic, he thought, than a girl's anticipations of wifehood? But he would do his duty, and he fancied that he was doing his duty when he put aside her earnest, almost passionate protestations, ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... herself, the liking she took for me, her pleasure yet fear and shame when first I felt her cunt, the shock of delight and confusion when on my twiddling it, she had spent; how she made up her mind to run out of the house when the milkman came, the hysterical faint when I first laid my prick between her slit and spent, the sensation of relief when I had not done, an instinct told her I should, in spending outside, the sort of feeling of "poor fellow, he wants me, he may ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... sound came from them; he followed Bashville in silence. When they entered the library Lydia was already there. Bashville withdrew without a word. Then Cashel sat down, and, to her consternation, bent his head on his hand and yielded to an hysterical convulsion. Before she could resolve how to act he looked up at her with his face distorted and discolored, and tried ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... iron crown,—and then her neuralgias, and her back-aches, and her fits of depression, in which she thinks she is nothing and less than nothing, and those paroxysms which men speak slightingly of as hysterical,—convulsions, that is all, only not commonly fatal ones,—so many trials which belong to her fine and mobile structure,—that she is always entitled to pity, when she is placed in conditions which develop her nervous tendencies. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... not lain down. When we came home at four o'clock, Cecil was quite knocked up, excited and hysterical. Her maid advised me to leave her to her; so I took a bath, and came ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... balancing sometimes with hysterical precision [Footnote: Hysterical precision. What does this mean?] on the ledge of the parapet, passing each other at whisker's length, but cutting each other dead. [Footnote: Cutting each other dead. Have you ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... and finding another table played on as recklessly as before. In ten minutes she had lost all but a single gold piece. Leaving the table again, she held this up between her finger and thumb, and showed it to her friend with a hysterical little laugh. ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... not confess the truth even to Mrs. Macdougal,' the girl went on in a low voice. 'I have been a little hysterical, and it is very good of you to bear ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... and went to her bedroom, where she sat down, and, putting her face on the bedclothes, gave way to a long fit of hysterical sobbing. She would not come down to tea, and excused herself on the ground of sickness. Catharine went up to her mother and inquired what was the ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... the extent of having had at least good primary school teaching. But though they read—clean, healthy English books—this, so far from making them inclined to favour frantic or immoral social experiments, should have, one may hope, just the opposite effect. Far from being a spectacled, angular, hysterical, uncomfortable race, perpetually demanding extravagant changes in shrill tones, they are, at least, as distinguished for womanly modesty, grace, and affection, as Englishwomen in any ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... the front seat with Mrs. Harnden. By the time he had teamed the Squire's fat little nag along for a mile he had succeeded in calming Mrs. Harnden's hysterical spirits. He induced her to quit looking over her shoulder at the great torch that lighted luridly the heavens above the deserted town. "It's a pillar of fire by night, madam, as you say! But that's as far as it fits in with ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... to tell us that her mistress was asleep. The Frenchwoman's first impulse had been to be hysterical and helpless; it was only her terror of Guy prevailing over all others that made her, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... little hysterical, and after the fit was over I broke loose. With a storm of tears, I laid open all my heart. I told her how nothing I had ever attempted had succeeded; that I had never even been able to attain that degree of satisfaction with myself and my own conclusions, without which ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... costumes of the masked revelers on the dance floor and at the tables, unearthly in themselves, were made even more so by the altering light. Music flooded the room from unseen sources. Laughter—hysterical, drunken, filled with utter abandonment—came from the dance floor, the tables, and the private booths and rooms hidden cleverly within ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... making at a raft, With little hope in such a rolling sea, A sort of thing at which one would have laughed,[112] If any laughter at such times could be, Unless with people who too much have quaffed, And have a kind of wild and horrid glee, Half epileptical, and half hysterical:— Their preservation would have been ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... hysterical laugh, "Yes," he cried out, "a sail! no doubt about it; she is bringing up a breeze, and standing this way. We are saved! ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... I was a silly, hysterical idiot," she murmured. "Why, I couldn't even tell them what I was afraid of. I wonder if it can possibly be just nerves? It ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... County Clerk's Office, Where Couple is Arrested. Abductor Attacks Sheriff Viciously. Is Manacled in Presence of Hysterical Young Heiress Who Faints as Her Lover is Overpowered. Irate Father ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... half over, brought a young man with him. Fumbling at his shirt collar, apologising for being late, assuring us that he had dined, he introduced his friend to the company as a young man of genius, of extraordinary genius. Don't I remember Villiers's nervous, hysterical voice! Don't I remember the journalist's voice when he asked Ninon's lover if he sold his pictures, creating at once a bad impression? By some accident a plate was given to him, out of which one of the cats had been fed. The plate might have been given to any ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... close to the ragged edge of the opening through which he had been forcibly dragged by Stuart and Henri, and as he spluttered and blew dirt which had introduced itself into his mouth from his discoloured lips, he gave vent to a laugh, a smothered sound of merriment, perhaps a semi-hysterical giggle, in any case to a sound which grated on the senses of ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... there are any honest men left in it! The conversion of England! The retrogression of England! Do you think such a thing is likely to happen because a few misguided clerics choose to appeal to the silly sentimentality of hysterical women with such church tricks and rags of paganism as incense and candles! Bah! Do not judge the English inward heart by its small outward follies, Monsignor! There are more honest, brave, and sensible folk in the British Islands than you think. And though our foreign foes desire our fall, the seed ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... was spoken with all the ardour of youthful passion. There was no sham in it. No hysterical impulse. It ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the handwriting of hysterical patients, I have shown that under the influence of suggested emotions, or under the influence of sensorial stimulations, the handwriting of a hysterical patient may be modified. It gets larger, for example, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... him, trying to grasp the meaning of the words. Meaning would not come. He uttered a short, hysterical laugh that was like a bark. "You're crazy, Doc. You've ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... torturing mile—on, on he went, and they watched scarce drawing breath, their faces white, their very limbs held as in a palsied, fearsome spell—and then, sudden, abrupt, terrifying, there rose a shriek, wild, hysterical, prolonged, in a woman's voice, the cadence wavering from guttural to shrill and ending in a ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... wild-goose chase; capriciousness &c adj.; kink. V. be capricious &c adj.; have a maggot in the brain; take it into one's head, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; blow hot and cold; play fast and loose, play fantastic tricks; tourner casaque [Fr.]. Adj. capricious; erratic, eccentric, fitful, hysterical; full of whims &c n.; maggoty; inconsistent, fanciful, fantastic, whimsical, crotchety, kinky [U.S.], particular, humorsome^, freakish, skittish, wanton, wayward; contrary; captious; arbitrary; unconformable &c 83; penny wise and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that people are knocked down successfully and artistically," admitted the other. "In everyday life they resent it. Yes—if you do anything hysterical there will be some sort of a disgraceful noise, I suppose. It's shoot or suit in these unromantic days, Dysart, otherwise the newspapers ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... twenty-two were born dead, one hundred and ninety-five died from convulsions in infancy, twenty-seven died in infancy from other causes, seventy-eight were epileptics, eleven were insane, thirty-nine were paralyzed, forty-five were hysterical, six had St. Vitus's dance, one hundred and five were ordinarily healthy. That variations in the nervous system which produce more or less unusual mental peculiarities and which do not take the form of nervous disease ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... silly woman, Mr. Wittekind; but I'm not—not to the extent of an hysterical invention. Mr. Chayne has told me definitely that those two manuscripts came to your office, that the books were printed from them and that they were destroyed ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... German law. Imagine how such an occurrence would have been "played up" in the American newspapers, with pictures, perhaps, of the executioner and his sword, with articles from poets and women's organisations, with appeals for pardon and talk of brainstorms and the other hysterical concomitants of murder trials in the United States. But in the German newspapers a little paragraph, not exceeding ten lines, simply related the fact that these two women, condemned for murdering such and such a person, ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... position that is not infrequently agreeable to women, a fact which may be brought into connection with the remarks of Adler already quoted (p. 131) concerning the comparative lack of adjustment of the feminine organs to the obverse position. It is noteworthy that in the days of witchcraft hysterical women constantly believed that they had had intercourse with the Devil in this manner. This circumstance, indeed, probably aided in the very marked disfavor in which coitus a posteriori fell after the decay of classic influences. The mediaeval physicians described it as mos diabolicus ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the borderline between profundity and insanity was thin and inexact and it was now clear on which side she stood. I looked at Gootes to see how he was taking her hysterical outburst, but he had found a batch of empty testtubes which he was building ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... he had advanced several thousand dollars to the girl, and still her desire for martyrdom had not entirely vanished. Realizing that the mere presence of one so temperamentally hysterical as she was a constant menace, he insisted upon her going South, and in order to provide handsomely for her comfort he borrowed from his friends. He was aghast when he finally reckoned up the amount he had ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... out of his hysterical frenzy, and returned to a somewhat normal state of mind. He reasoned himself several times into the belief that those men were not in the least like the men he had seen Sunday. He knew that one could not recognize ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... bark. "Funny?" he said. "I'm absolutely hysterical with joy and good humor. I'm out of my mind with happiness." He paused. "Anyway," he finished, "I'm out of my mind. Which puts me in good company. The entire FBI, Brubitsch, Borbitsch, Garbitsch, Dr. Thomas O'Connor and Sir Lewis Carter—we're all out of our minds. If we weren't, we'd ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... nickname, "Le petit Litz." It was with the utmost difficulty that his father had been able to keep him from making religion his career, and giving up his already glittering fame. Never in his life did he cease to thrill with an almost hysterical passion for churchly affairs ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... much for the gamin. He was still that. He had not yet been transformed into the gentleman he aspired to become, and in a way that was more honest than courteous he forestalled another hysterical outburst on the part ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... was past now, and Mary sank into a chair and burst into a fit of hysterical sobbing. Madame Michaud caressed and soothed her as if she had been an ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... in the Insane.—Foreign bodies may be introduced voluntarily and in great numbers by the insane. Hysterical individuals may assert the presence of a foreign body, or may even volitionally swallow or aspirate objects. It is a mistake to do a bronchoscopy in order to cure by suggestion the delusion of foreign body presence. Such "cures" ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... was in his house, where I was very welcome, and had no more urgent business than to rest myself and recover my spirits. As he spoke he offered me another glass of wine, of which, indeed, I stood in great want, for I was faint, and inclined to be hysterical. Then he sat down beside the fire, lit another cigar, and for some time ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... the daguerreotypist's. So to the gallery I went, an hour after Adelaide had returned from Italy; as you know, I had not seen her for several years (indeed, not since my marriage). And so to the gallery I went, with buzzing in my ears and dizziness in my eyes, and an hysterical choking, which made me afraid to open my lips. Why my father was so anxious to go to this exhibition I hardly know; but I went to please him, and came back to please myself, without having an idea ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... in a half-hysterical manner, and he remembered what she had said about the treasury, and that fares ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... is no longer a common temple for civilized states. Our house is divided against itself and is falling asunder. Peace reigns everywhere save on the banks of the Vaal, but it is an armed peace, an odious peace, a poisoned peace which is eating us up and from which we are all dying."[5] Such hysterical outbursts in France were not taken seriously by the Government, and the feeling which inspired them was possibly more largely due to historic hatred of England than to the inherent justice ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... self-centred life, wrapped up in the porcine contentment that broods within nor looks abroad over the land. When anything external to himself and his food and drink penetrates to his intelligence he makes a flurried fool of himself, rushing madly and frantically here and there in a hysterical effort either to destroy or get away from the cause of disturbance. He is the incarnation of ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... swaying their bodies sympathetically. He works himself into a frenzy, in which the fiddlers vainly try to keep up with him. He turns and digs the laggard angrily in the side without losing the metre. The climax comes. The bride bursts into hysterical sobs, while the women wipe their eyes. A plate, heretofore concealed under his coat, is whisked out. He has conquered; the inevitable ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... that looked like a wash of paint. Here and there the miniature forests of doura stood up almost still in the sunshine. Above the sturdy brakes of the sugar-cane the crested hoopoes flew, and the larks sang, fluttering their little wings as if in an almost hysterical ecstasy. Although the time was winter, and the Christians' Christmas was not far off, the soft airs seemed to be whispering all the sweet messages of the ardent spring that smiles over Eastern lands. This was a world of young rapture, not careless, but softly intense ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... her recumbent position, and sat upright in the bed. A glorious lustre broke through the mist that whelmed her eyes, and a faint color sprung to her pallid cheek. She clasped her daughter in her arms with an hysterical sob; looked wildly into her face; pressed a burning, quivering kiss upon her forehead, and then her lips gave forth fragments of speech, broken, but beautiful. But this did not last long; a weakness ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... a febrile paroxysm, I have readily perceived the pulse there. On the other hand, when the heart pulsates more languidly, it is often impossible to feel the pulse not merely in the fingers, but the wrist, and even at the temple, as in persons afflicted with lipothymiae asphyxia, or hysterical symptoms, and in the ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... way, and so Rose went beyond his duty. West goes on, "One man, Patrice Dumont, a half-breed, living close to the reserve, fell ill, as did the members of his family. Dumont, who was the sole support of the family, died. The rest of the family became hysterical and Rose had to be there continually. He dressed the body of Dumont for burial and made a coffin fastened with wooden pegs in the absence of nails, and as the flies were bad he buried the body next day with the help of some Indians. ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... pushed her aside and threw herself upon the sofa. Her first feeling was a horrible joy at not hearing the name of Octave; but she tried to smother her hysterical utterances by pressing her mouth against the cushion upon which her ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... he was a little man, his voice was deep, almost sonorous, and thus when the chaplain followed him with a thin, piping voice, "Amen!" there was something so incongruous in the contrast that many who had been wrought up to a high state of excitement felt like giving way to hysterical laughter. Nevertheless, the utmost silence prevailed, ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... he threw his arm firmly round the shrinking form of Ione. She drew back, gazed earnestly in his face, and then burst into hysterical laughter: ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... not console his wife, whose hysterical fit was succeeded by a racking headache, which by night was almost unbearable. Strong coffee, aconite, brandy, and belladonna, were all tried without effect. Nothing helped her until she commenced her toilet, when in the excitement of dressing she partly forgot her disquietude, and the ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... weather has another revulsion of feeling. In the morning it is hysterical, laughing and crying by turns. We come down-stairs booted and spurred for the ascent, and make directly for the barometer in the doorway. Alas, it tells but a quavering and uncertain tale, itself evidently ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... women, as an obscure but worthy young colored man who had commended himself to a few thinking persons by building up an excellent industrial school for his people. He came off that platform amid scenes of almost hysterical enthusiasm and was thenceforth proclaimed as the leader of his race, the Moses of his people, and ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... Merrill went on, and his voice had grown almost hysterical. "They could carry one of us off. We're not safe. We must take measures at once to protect ourselves. Why, at night—We must make traps. If we can capture one, or, better, a pair, we're famous. We're a ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... think we are ourselves again, and can be reasonable," Valentine began. "Don't let us be hysterical. Spiritualists always suffer ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... for passion or caresses. ... I have no husband!" Kseniya cried, sobbing and shrieking like a hysterical girl. They calmed her after a time, and she spoke to them in snatches between her sobs, which were less violent for a while. Then she broke out weeping afresh, and ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... attacked by a disease which carried him off at the age of forty-two. There is a tradition that he installed forty-eight images of Buddha in his mansion, and for their services employed many beautiful women, so that sensual excesses contributed to the semi-hysterical condition into which he eventually fell. That is not impossible, but certainly a sense of impotence to save his father and his family from the calamities he clearly saw approaching was the proximate cause ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... air, that is so bad for the complexion, at this hour! But I think of nothing in comparison with the interests of Bice. Send for her. Lucy, sweet one, you would not spoil her prospects. Send for her—before it is known." Then she laughed with a hysterical vehemence. "I see; some one has been telling her it was the poor little child whom you left with me, whom I watched over—yes, I was good to the little one. I am not a hard-hearted woman. Lucy: it was I who put this thought into your mind. I said—of English parentage. I meant ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... mother's first sign of super-excitement, until it ended in a scream. If he were to scream she would be more terrified than she had ever been in her life. She had never heard a man scream; but then she had never seen a man grow hysterical. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... she was conscious of nothing till, hours later, as it appeared to her, she became dimly aware of her husband's voice, high, hysterical and important, haranguing a group of scared lantern-struck faces that had sprung up mysteriously ...
— The Choice - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... gave such an eldritch scream, that the whole society suddenly came to a standstill. I thought it best to assume an aspect of innocent composure and conscious rectitude; which had its effect, for though the lady began with a certain degree of hysterical animation to describe her wrongs, she finished with a hearty laugh, in which the company cordially joined, and I delicately chimed in. For the rest of the dance she seemed to resign herself to her fate, and floated through space, ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... topic. And, in order to get as far from love as possible, she turned to business. When she and her friend descended the broad stairway of the mansion Lana was discoursing on the need of coaxing men of big commercial affairs into politics. Her views were rather immature and her fervor was a bit hysterical, but the subject was plainly more to her taste than that on which ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... whether much of the evidence given, especially by the Belgian witnesses, may not be due to excitement and overstrained emotions, and whether, apart from deliberate falsehood, persons who mean to speak the truth may not in a more or less hysterical condition have been imagining themselves to have seen the things which they say that they saw. Both the lawyers who took the depositions, and we when we came to examine them, fully recognized this possibility. The lawyers, as already observed, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... taken any real interest in the agitation. Any real share in it, beyond all doubt, they have not taken: the movers in these meetings from first to last would not make fifteen thousand; and the inert subscribers of Petitions would not make seventy thousand. Secondly, in spite of the hysterical violence manifested by the letter of the Premier, and partly in consequence of that violence (so theatrical and foreign to Lord John's temperament), many doubt whether he himself carried any sincerity with the movement. And ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... considerably compressed while his son was speaking, and there was an hysterical cry from Aunt Bethia, whose great wish had always been to see her favourite Jack figure in ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... a state of collapse, and her sister and Betty both saw that she must be taken home. It was hard work, going back without Bob, and once in the kitchen, Miss Charity was hysterical, clinging to her sister and sobbing that first Faith had died and now ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... hysterical flood of tears, and clung to him like some terrified child to its only friend in ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... brought down to a temperance which caused admirers of that species of fowl to tremble with indignation. In short, the two capitals were as much at odds as the two poles of a magnet, and the results of this repulsion were not all of them worthy of hysterical admiration. ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... kept at home. All the greatest names will be extinct. And they are the splendid, silly ones who expose themselves most. Young Lord Elphinstowe a week ago—the last of his line! Scarcely a fragment of him to put together." There were women who had a hysterical desire to talk about such things and make gruesome pictures even of slightly founded stories. But when she heard them she did not even lift her eyes from ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... nervous, excitable, hysterical Arab temperament which is almost phrensied by the neighbourhood of a home from which ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... it. 'Pon my soul, I—I—it's really a very vexatious affair. I feel for Lady Juliana, poor woman! No wonder she's hysterical-five and twenty thousand a year refused! What is it she would have? The finest deer park in Scotland! Every sort of game upon the estate! A salmon fishing at the very door!—I should just like to know what is the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... best of the Sienese Quattrocento painters, is absent, and Vecchietta is only represented by a predella picture (47); it is not till we came to Sodoma, whose famous St. Sebastian (1279) suggests altogether another kind of art, a sensuous and sometimes an almost hysterical sort of ecstasy, as in the Swooning Virgin or the Swoon of St. Catherine at Siena, that we ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... fear of the net of Rome is futile also. People drift to where they belong, and Rome seems to offer to take all spiritual responsibility from the shoulders of her children. It gives them an emotional satisfaction which brings comfort to all, and amongst these any of hysterical nature probably become far happier and better citizens under her wing than they would otherwise have been. No nets will catch the expanding soul which is rising out of its paltry self into ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... sudden accident was brief on this occasion, for there were two skilful physicians present, one of them having long been the family attendant. Mrs. Allen and Laura, in a half-hysterical state, stood clinging to each other, supported by Mr. Goulden, as the medical gentlemen made a slight examination and applied restoratives. After a moment they lifted their heads and looked gravely and significantly at each other; then the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... fixin's she had donned fluttered in the air in gayest mockery. Eventually she was thrown however, but without the least injury to herself, but somewhat disordered in raiment. When I saw Bennett he was standing half bent over laughing in almost hysterical convulsion at the entirely impromptu circus which had so suddenly performed an act not on the program. Arcane was much pleased and laughed heartily when he saw no one was hurt. We did not think the cattle had so much life and so little sense as to waste their energies so uselessly. ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... hurt as badly as that?" he asked, and her answer was a low, rather hysterical little laugh, coming nearer bitterness than anything he had ever heard from her ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... but cared for me—the hundredth part Of how—I care for you, you could not be So cruel as to lay this torture on me. It hurts me so!—it cuts me like a sword. Don't make me, dear! Don't, will you! O,O,O! [She sinks down in a hysterical fit.] ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... ten the height of a man there is a roof above the world— of rock—and very, very smooth." ... He burst again into hysterical tears. "Before you ask me any more, give me some food ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... courage at the calm, dignified attitude of the old vicomte, and began to think that these "children-eating Prussians" might perhaps forego their craving for one evening. Therefore the chef did his best, encouraged by a group of hysterical maids who had suddenly become keenly alive to their own plumpness ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... or Franciscan friar: while one voice thundering woe or pleading peace dominates the crowd. Of the temporary effects produced by these preachers there can be no question. The changes which they wrought in states and cities prove that the enthusiasm they aroused was more than merely hysterical. Savonarola, the greatest of his class, founded not only a transient commonwealth in Florence, but also a political party of importance, and left his lasting impress on the greatest soul of the sixteenth century in Italy—Michael Angelo Buonarroti. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... vein had effectually rent the veil of illusion that shielded Roy from aggressive actualities. In Udaipur there had been no hysterical press; no sedition flaunting on the house-tops. One hadn't arrived at the twentieth century, even. Except for a flourishing hospital, a few hideous modern interiors, and a Resident—who was very good friends with Vinx—one stepped straight back into the leisurely, colourful, frankly brutal ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... fool! I'm not a ghost!" shouted Gay, but the only response came in an hysterical babble of moans from the negro quarters somewhere in the rear and in the soft whir in his face of a leatherwing bat as it wheeled low in the twilight. There was no smoke in the chimneys, and the square old house, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... proportion of hysterical nonsense from the De Wet expert and various intelligence and departmental centres; also a direct order from the general at De Aar to proceed without delay to Orange River Station and there entrain for Jagersfontein Road in the Orange River ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... Her sobs, hysterical and due to overwrought nerves, had given place to occasional sharp catches of the breath, like those uttered by a little child whose "crying-spell" is almost over. She did not speak, but she put out her hand to him, and he took it ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... every woman is occasionally subject, and makes me rave with impatience and excitement, they will report me a dangerous lunatic, subject to periodical attacks of violent frenzy; but, young man, even at my worst, I am no more mad than any other woman, wild with grief and hysterical through nervous irritation, might at any time become without having ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... in breathless terror, looking in each other's faces. Phillipa gave a half hysterical laugh, dropped into a chair and went ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... captious, solely for the reason they shared the secret of, and Charmian respected this with a devotion so obvious as to be almost spectacular. Cornelia found herself turning into a romantic heroine, and had to make such struggle against the transformation as she could in bursts of hysterical gayety. These had rather the effect of deepening Charmian's compassionate gloom, till she exhausted her possibilities in that direction and began to crave some new expression. There was no change in her affection for Cornelia; and there were times when Cornelia longed ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... or the brown-sailed fishing boats, nor did he once glance towards the picturesque harbour. He saw only his own future, the shattered pieces of his carefully-thought-out scheme. The first fury had passed. His brain was working now. In her room below, Lady Hunterleys was lying on the couch, half hysterical. Three times she had sent for her husband. If he should return at that moment, Draconmeyer knew that the game was up. There would be no bandying words between them, no involved explanations, no possibility of any further ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and restraint to energy and resolve. He thinks more of the organisation than the practice of charity, esteems a penny saved as three halfpence gained, had liefer detect an impostor than help a deserving man. He is apt to label all generous emotions as hysterical, and in this he errs; for when a man calls the generous emotions hysterical he usually means that he would confuse them with hysterics if ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... understood. He went back to his seat, sobbing with the hysterical weakness of a sick man. "He's bungled the business, Colonel," he said bitterly. "Oh, God! If you had only let ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... most serious of all things, and how in his vanity he had tried to alarm his brother, and how this evil lying spirit must be beaten out of him. Paul was silent, for how could he explain? And the kindly father, who had had to work himself up to this cold-blooded severity, went half hysterical when he had once begun, and overdid the thing. Paul's flesh ached and stung and quivered on his bones for days. A fortnight afterwards, when he went to bathe, having forgotten his flogging, his stripes ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... sort of hysterical composure. He opened the chest. It was patently artificial. There were such details on the inside as would be imagined in a container needed to fit something snugly. At the edges of the opening there ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... not in order to leave—no, certainly not in order to leave. An audacious notion seized me—if there had been a key in the door, I would have turned it and locked myself in along with the rest to escape going. I had a perfectly hysterical dread of going out into the ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... Sixteen her number is—a sweet number, Sir! Limewash or brilliantine, Sir?... And I know 'er maid and her man, too; oh, she keeps a grand 'ouse, Sir! (Observing that the Sympathetic Customer is gradually growing red in the face and getting hysterical.) Towel too tight for you, Sir? Allow me; thank you, Sir. (Here two fresh Customers enter.) Ready for you in one moment, Gentlemen. The other Assistant is downstairs 'aving his tea, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... The really characteristic and indispensable feature of these caves is, however, still to be mentioned. It is the image of the lingam, or phallus, gigantic in size, and carven out of solid stone, in the innermost shrine, where it is the object of hysterical or lustful worship. Every year, on an appointed feast-day, three or four thousand people throng to this shrine, some to pray for offspring, others to seek license for illicit pleasure. Elephanta has become in this way the symbol and propagator ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... him. She knew what had brought him home. Marie's hysterical protest had leaked out. The girl had talked to ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben |
